Can Republicans require voter ID, proof of citizenship through reconciliation?

WASHINGTON —

The U.S. House passed a $95 billion budget blueprint on Wednesday that paves the way for several Republican priorities, including President Donald Trump’s push to tighten voting requirements across the country, but there are still open questions about enforcement.

Republicans have pursued several strategies to pass as much of the “SAVE America Act” as possible, which would require voter ID at the polls and proof of citizenship to register to vote.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has said that a process called budget reconciliation is “our best shot” at accomplishing those goals.

On Wednesday, House Republicans moved forward with the first step of that process by passing a budget framework on a 216-214 vote. It outlines additional funding for the Iran war, farm aid, and election security, although finer details still need to be fleshed out in the next phase of the process.

Budget reconciliation allows Republicans to pass certain priorities on a party-line vote to get around Democratic opposition, but there are also limits on what policies can be included under the rules of the Senate.

Given those guardrails, the reconciliation bill likely won’t be able to force Democrat-led states to adopt stricter voting requirements, according to Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute.

“The best that Republicans can hope for is to authorize new incentive grants that support primarily Republican states that were already inclined to adopt the measures in the SAVE Act with additional funding to enable them to do so,” Boccia said. “The real components of the SAVE America Act that are trying to force more Democratic states to enforce voter ID and similar restrictions, you cannot force on them through reconciliation.”

Speaker Johnson’s office didn’t directly respond on Wednesday when asked whether Republicans would attempt to enforce voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements nationwide through the reconciliation bill.

Johnson previously described a grant program that he said would allow blue states to pull down funding “if they come to their senses and they want to avail themselves to election integrity proposals,” according to a press release sent out by the Speaker’s office last month.

Asked about enforcement on Wednesday, some House Republicans indicated that the policy specifics are still being worked out.

“It’s important to me to make sure we have teeth so that all of the SAVE America Act actually gets implemented, and that’s a policy that will be worked on over the next few weeks,” said Rep. Tracey Mann, R-Kan.

“We’re going to do everything we can to get the states to go along with it. So we can try to force them. We can try to bribe them. I’m down for whatever,” said Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C.

House Republicans are also attempting to attach the SAVE America Act to other pieces of legislation, like a must-pass defense spending bill and legislation limiting stock trading for lawmakers. That approach, however, is unlikely to win the 60 votes needed for passage in the Senate.

Also on Wednesday, the House linked a voter ID requirement to a bill that would ban members of Congress from purchasing individual stocks from publicly traded companies, in an effort to prevent lawmakers from profiting off of insider information. It passed on a 232-198 vote and now heads to the Senate.

Critics argue the ban doesn’t go far enough because it allows lawmakers to keep their existing stocks and doesn’t apply to the president. Democrats also opposed the voter ID requirement, arguing it creates unnecessary barriers to the ballot box that could disenfranchise some voters.

“So let’s vote on a real stock trading ban and vote no on this fake ban with voter suppression,” said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va.